"Cooperative Care: Empowered Caregiving" is a 40-minute documentary about a home health care coop in Wisconsin. The film explores the philosophy of the group and the daily activities of the CNAs who work there.

Waushara County Director of Human Services Lucy Rowley, obtained a grant from the State of Wisconsin’s Community Links program in 1999 to study the possibility of creating a direct care worker cooperative. “I read about a cooperative of direct care workers out in the Bronx in New York,” said Rowley, “and I asked myself: why couldn’t we do something like that here in Waushara County?”

[Editor's note: This short film documents the current state of BIOME (which also gets rendered as Viome, Vio.me, and VIOME) a cooperative and solidarity enterprise initiated by workers at a factory in Thessaloniki, Greece that was abandonded by its former owners during the financial crisis. Workers and local community members took over the factory and managed it through a participatory process. Today, 22 worker-owners at BIOME produce environmentally friendly cleaning products that are affordable for everyone. While small, BIOME is proving the viability of radically

Victims of labor trafficking are finding new dignity and safety in their work - through Damayan Cleaning Cooperative. The first Filipina migrant worker-owned cooperative in the US recently opened in New York. [For more about Damayan Cleaning Cooperative, see the article Filipina Trafficking Survivors Launch a Co-op -ed.]

Editor's note: Today we present the testimony of more worker-owners, delivered this past February at a hearing convened by the New York City Council Community Development committee. Read more hearing testimony from co-op practicioners here. Read about the end results of the hearing here. Complete written testimony from the hearing is embedded below this article.

Editor's introduction:Today we present testimony from four worker-owners, delivered at the the New York City Council Committee on Community Development hearing this past February. the hearing was to consider a proposal for a city budget line devoted to cooperative development. Given that we don't often get to hear directly from worker-owners, we've rescued this important documentation from the bowels of the NYC Council website

Today, corporate profits are at an all-time high and employee wages are at their lowest ever as a percent of GDP.i Worker cooperatives embody the hope that we can reverse the downward spiral in wage stagnation, wealth distribution, and concentration of ownership to build an economy that truly serves people and communities.

From grocery stores and bakeries to bike shops and day care centers, worker-owned cooperatives are gaining popularity across the country. How are they faring in the recession? What solutions do co-ops offer for today’s recession/depression? If they gain even more popularity, could they transform the economy and the way we think it should work?

Guests include Dan Thomases, a founding member of Box Dog Bikes co-op, John Kusakabe of the Arizmendi Bakery co-op, and Hilary Abell of Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES).

(Editor's Note: Steven Dawson was president and founding director of the Industrial Cooperative Association (now the ICA Group) from 1978 through 1988. He is currently president of the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute (PHI), the nonprofit affiliate of the 1600-employee Cooperative Home Care Associates - the largest worker cooperative in the U.S.

Past issues of GEO have reported on the emergence of a particular type of worker cooperative, the home care cooperative. In the 1980s, the federal government followed the lead of state governments like Wisconsin and acknowledged that elderly and disabled people who need help in day-to-day living are best served by in-home assistance. Medicare and Medicaid funding that would have otherwise been used only for nursing homes would now be applicable to home care services.

As the baby boom ages into the elder explosion in the world's industrial nations, more and more innovative solutions will appear in the effort to provide seniors with the many sorts of care they deserve and to which they are entitled.

The keynote speaker at the Second U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperative Conference was Rick Surpin. In 1985 Rick founded Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), the first worker-owned home care cooperative in the United States. CHCA now employs over 1,000 home care workers in quality jobs. Virtually all of the worker-owners of CHCA are African American and Latina women.